Premiership: Newcastle Falcons 7-29 Gloucester

Gloucester have lost just one of their last six games

Newcastle's poor run continued as Gloucester ran out comfortable winners to go third in the Premiership.

The visitors built up a 19-0 lead with tries from Andy Symons, Jeremy Thrush and Henry Purdy before Mark Wilson went over from a maul for the hosts.

Former England centre Billy Twelvetrees increased Gloucester's lead with a penalty before being sin-binned.

Gareth Denman added a fourth try to secure a bonus point and consign the Falcons to a fourth successive defeat.

Gloucester winger Purdy enjoyed a fine night in cold conditions.

He set up Symons for the first try with an incisive break before chasing his own kick and showing good footballing skills to nudge it into the in-goal area and touch down.

That was the visitors' third try and after only 35 minutes they were already in total control.

Johan Ackermann's men also defended well throughout, particularly when they were down to 14 men after Twelvetrees was sin-binned for a deliberate knock-on in the 50th minute.

Denman was driven over in the corner to secure a fourth successive victory and leave Newcastle still looking for their first win since September.

Newcastle director of rugby Dean Richards:

"It's very disappointing and frustrating, as it was last week. We made a lot of mistakes and showed an inability to score despite the amount of possession we had.

"We should have scored more tries than we did. We looked pretty pedestrian in defence as well to be honest, making mistake after mistake and it probably cost us the game.

"We had a chat at half-time and it comes down to our understanding of how to play the game and if you are going to attack laterally all the time and put no variety on your game then you'll never score enough tries."

Gloucester head coach Johan Ackermann:

"I don't like it when people say we are top-four contenders.

"Obviously, we take confidence from the win but you know it's not going to get any easier and if you say that sort of thing you are putting a cross on your back and teams will start coming after you.

"We still have to play some quality teams home and away and we don't want to get carried away - there is still some hard work to be done.

"We have a fair number of players to come back and to have some of our young players standing up and showing they can perform at this level is very encouraging."

Newcastle: Hammersley; Tait, Agulla, Socino, Sinoti; Hodgson, Stuart; Vickers, Lawson, Welsh, Witty, Robinson, M Wilson, Welch (capt), Latu.

Replacements: Cooper, Mavinga, S Wilson, Green, Graham, Dawson, Flood, Harris.

Gloucester: Hudson; Purdy, Symons, Twelvetrees, Thorley; Burns, Heinz (capt); Hohneck, Hanson, Afoa, Savage, Thrush, Polledri, Ludlow, Ackermann.

Replacements: Hibbard, McAllister, Denman, Slater, Clarke, Vellacott, Evans, Atkinson.